GunLab (KnownHost) » Grat 05

More Testing of the VG1-5

Chuck — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 08:00:22 +0000

Sunday Axel and I got together with Ian and Carl from Forgotten Weapons to do some high speed photographing of the VG1-5. The information that was obtained holds a number of clues to re-occurring issues that have come up. For the next week or so I will be posting high speed and standard videos of all the VG1-5’s, the 05, 06 and stg45 rifles.

Here are a couple of pictures of the rifles tested. The first is the VG1-5’s

The second is of the 05, 06 and stg45.

This was a very useful day at the range. My thanks go out to Axel, Carl and Ian for all the help they provided in the testing.

The first video in the series. This one is on the VG1-5 first prototype rifle that was made years ago by John. This rifle has had more rounds put through it then can be counted. These include reloads,WW2 German steel case, Czech post war steel case and all the different types of factory ammo that was made.

Machine gun shoot 11-30

Chuck — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 08:00:38 +0000

With the SAR show coming up we have a group of people staying at the house. So the Wednesday prior to the show a couple of us put on a small machine gun shoot, just to have some fun. Some of these shoots have ended up being a couple of hundred people in attendance. This year we wanted to keep it a little smaller so only about 50 people were invited.

Everyone at the house was allowed to choose one weapon from the reference collection to take out. In the past it has actually required two vehicles to haul out all the guns people wanted to take. This year it was kept small due to the amount of work that had to be accomplished along with everything else.

The weapons that were taken was the SIG AMT, the early roller lock family of weapons ( Gerat 05, 06 and the STG 45) A Beretta AR-70, the MP-44 as well as a variety of handguns. There was a number of machine guns at the shoot as well.

Here is a quick video of the fun that was had.

Answers to the post of 11-29

Chuck — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:14:35 +0000

The first question that would needed to be answered is what do all these parts have in common. That answer would be up coming projects at Gun Lab.

The Cetme, H&K, 05 , G-41 G-43 and 03 pictures is for the 05 project we are working on. The fire control group is changing to be a copy of the 03 rifle. The safety will be going back to a G-41/G-43/03 type. The magazine will be more in line with The G-43 /03 type. There is a great deal of design work that needs to go on to make the rifle.

The AR-10 bolt is for the AR-16 rifle that is next on the list of rifles that we will be building.

I like single shot rifles and with a friend on mine (Orin) we are working on making usable drawings of a number of them.

I have a Scottie rifle that someone sporterized the stock. Ian from forgotten weapons let me borrow his parts so I could make the correct ones for my rifle.

The destroyer and AR-70 parts are for my rifles and needed to be repaired and measured.

Last but not least is the EM-2 bolt which is being reversed engineered to try and correct a few problems with the rifle design.

On to the pictures.

Cut away of the 05 rifle

Chuck — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 08:00:17 +0000

This is one of the rifles that we have been working on here at Gun Lab. I thought I would show you a few pictures of a cut away rifle of this model.

Here is a view from the left side that is not cut away.

This is a close up of the receiver area.

Now for the cut away look.

close up of the gas system.

close up of the receiver.

Another view

close up of the chamber area

Top view of the receiver

New tool for the wood shop

Chuck — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 08:00:51 +0000

A while back a gent passed away and his wife was left with a cnc router. A friend of mine had loaned him the money for the router so the wife let him take the router as payement. Long story short he had no use for the router and a little trading went on and now this sets in my wood shop.

The table is 3’x5′ which is a perfect size for my little wood shop. All is not perfect though.As you can see there is no dust collector cabinet. This is something that has to be fixed as this little machine will put out more saw dust then I can clean in a week. The next problem is the support stand. It was not part of the original machine but something that was added later and poorly done as well. To give you an idea this is the cross support.

It was an aluminum extrusion for a window or door that was cut away to kind of fit and then screwed on to the base leg.

The aluminum leg would be fine if they were accurately marked and machines to fit the frame, but they were not. In addition they are not adjustable to allow proper leveling.

The good news is that it comes with a lot of tooling and tie downs and has mach3. I have had the opportunity to run this machine and it works great. The only machine improvement that I am going to make is raise the z axis to all the use of a 4th axis.

A few more pictures of the new toy.

I am hoping that this will be a great time saver for the stocks we have to make on the VG1-5 and 05 rifles as well as pattern making for the metal casting I need to do. For those of you that will ask, yes I could have used one of the cnc mills or machining centers to cut wood and I have. The problem with that is the oil that covers the machine tools is not good for the wood parts and the saw dust is not good for the coolant systems.

Interesting site AR180s.com

Chuck — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 14:53:21 +0000

If you have not been to AR180s.com site you should drop in and check it out. He just finished a comparison on AR-180 bolts that is quite interesting and well worth the read.

http://ar180s.com/?p=250

I hope to be adding to his article as I will be sending him pictures of the SA-80, Leader and Bushmaster rifle bolts and bolt carriers.

I will also not be in the shop this weekend as I have to make a Arizona cross country trip. Not everything is work, just most things. I hope to be back early tomorrow afternoon.

One last note. A friend of mine in Germany was able to track down a book on the 7.92 kurtz cartridge that I have been looking for.

The last page so you can try and find it.

I tried to contact the author and publisher for a copy but never received a response.

Interesting picture on page 221

That would be me shooting the 05.

While the book is written in German it still has a great deal of useful information and pictures. Maybe one day it will be in English.

Part 2 of pressing the Gerat 05 receiver

Chuck — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 14:45:30 +0000

With the first stamping completed on the Gerat 05 receiver it is now time to complete the second stamping. As you could see in the photos there were a couple of items that needed to be corrected.

With the second set of dies we press in the correct angle for the magazine housing, both in the front and back of the receiver.

The angle is not great but it make a very large difference to proper magazine placement.

This what it not looks like with the magazine installed.

You can see in this picture that the magazine has proper contact through out the entire receiver.

The rest of the second stamping also bent the bottom of the receiver.

Here is a look at the second set of stamping dies.

This close up shows the new angle for the front of the dies.

So today I am back out finishing the second pressing for the second stamping op. More to come.

Pressing the Gerat 05 receiver.

Chuck — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:58:55 +0000

In this video you will be watching us press the e receiver . We took vidoes from around the die. As you are watching it you can see the movement of the metal in the die. This is the first stamping. To finish the parts a second stamping will be performed. That will be in the next post.

Making the Gerat 05

Chuck — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 01:44:12 +0000

In the last post I showed you some of the parts that had been made for the 06, this time we will chat about the o5 and do a little more detail about the making of it.

The life of the 05 starts out like any other pressing as a water jet cut flat. The initial flat were made with my band saw and file until it is some what close to what I need. Then they were stamped and checked.

Then drawings are made up based upon our findings and 10 flats are water jetted out. They are pressed and cut to determine if the metal is moving properly in the die. The final pressings are checked and measured to see if it correct. Then the drawings are again changed and 10 more flats ordered and re-stamped and the process is started all over again. Some where between the 8th and 12th time we finally have a product that we want. Once we have the flats are correct and we feel that they are ready I determine the number that I am going to make. In the case of the 05 I want to make 50 complete rifles with the possibility of making 100 total if they sell. So I order 120 flats. In theory that should make 60 receivers. However, if truth be know I am hoping to get 50 complete rifles at of that number. With each step that we take, fixtures have to be made, milling has to completed, welding set ups need to be design and tested so by the time I get to the final product a certain number of them will be reduced to scrap.

In this picture you can see one of the test sets that we stamped a year ago. This is 3 out of 4 receivers that we made. All of them have problems of one sort or another. On the center one the cut for the mag housing was to far back and the lower on has a similar problem but to close to the mag housing. There was also a tearing problem on them as well. the top of the mad well was not pressing correctly and we changed the design and dimensions of the front angle piece. At the end of this process we though we had a correct design, that was not to be correct.

These 5 receiver flat are the latest batch of test pieces that we made. This group came after doing a series of test pieces were we changed the flat design and the stamping dies. There are also major problems with every one of the flats. All but the last one tore and they all had problems with the upper corner of the magazine housing.

This picture shows the tearing.

Another problem was the design of the flat.

This one shows that the flat design was not correct and would have to be changed as it left to much metal up close to the barrel extension.

In addition to the visible problems we have to cut a few of them to check metal thickness after stamping.

The dies were changed again to insure the proper metal thickness.

A few more pictures of the same stampings before and after modifying the dies.

So now with the stampings checked and re-checked we are ready to stamp out the right side receiver. From start to finish the process has taken about a year and over 100 bad stampings have been made. The good news is with the right side completed we can now used that knowledge to reduce the number of bad stampings on the left side of the receiver. Until next time.

The other projects at Gun Lab

Chuck — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 13:50:13 +0000

I did a little slipping in the machine gun shot video about one of the projects that we are also working on. That is the Gerat 06. There was only 4 of these weapons ever made before the Germans shifted to the STg45 instead. We are planning on doing 14 of them.

The other rifle that is also on the production line is the Gerat 05. This was a concept rifle only as no were ever made. This rifle is the only copy of one and I like it so much that I decided to do a run of 60 of them.

This is a picture of me shooting it.And a close up of it.

Both of these rifles are gas operated roller lock design. the little wood stocked one is pattern after the Gerat 03 that was made in 7.92x57mm. Both of these rifles are in 7.92×33 kurtz. Both rifles take the standard stg magazine as well as the 10 round ones that we make.

So as we are finishing up the VG1-5 I will also start posting about both of these weapons. Until next time.